


A Good Cup of Coffee

by ahyperactivehero (ahyperactiverhero)



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Good Sibling Allison Hargreeves, Good Sibling Klaus Hargreeves, Good Sibling Number Five | The Boy, Good Sibling Vanya Hargreeves, No Romance, Number Five deserves good coffee, Number Five | The Boy Needs A Hug
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:15:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25724962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahyperactiverhero/pseuds/ahyperactivehero
Summary: It seems like Five can never get a good cup of coffee. Klaus, Allison, and Vanya want to fix that for him. Simply some sibling fluff with the three of them trying to give Five the best cup of coffee he's ever had.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & Allison Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Ben Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Klaus Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy & Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 11
Kudos: 213





	1. Chapter 1

Klaus watched his brother blip around the room, clearly searching for something. He’d already opened almost every cabinet in the kitchen, and had resorted to kneeling down to look below the sink.

“Whatcha doin’?” Klaus asked in a singsong voice. It was only a matter of time before Five went from amusing to destructive, and Klaus honestly wasn’t sure how much more time was left.

Five paused, heaving a huge sigh as if it were a great burden to respond to his brother. “I’m looking for some coffee. I know I stashed some away the other day, but I can’t find it.”

Klaus glanced at Ben, who was standing off in the corner, also watching their younger looking brother. “Are you going to tell him you drank the last of it?” he asked.

Klaus shh’d Ben, even though there was no way Five could hear him. It was bad enough dealing with Five’s normal temper, he didn’t want to invoke his wrath by admitting that he’d drank his precious coffee.

Five glanced over at Klaus, his eyes clearly searching for something. “Klaus,” he said, tilting his head as he stepped closer. “Did _you_ drink my coffee?” 

Klaus rolled his eyes in a way that he hoped was believable. “Why on Earth would I risk life and limb by drinking _your_ coffee, Fivey?” he asked, moving quickly to sling an arm around Five’s shoulders. Five attempted to step away, but Klaus tugged his brother back to him. “Besides, you’re always complaining about how bad it tastes.”

Finally, Five shrugged his arm off, shoving him away in the process. Klaus rubbed his chest where Five’s smaller fist had landed, doing his best to look like a kicked puppy. Klaus was a very touchy person, frequently throwing his arms, legs, and sometimes whole body over his siblings when he felt like it.

It hadn’t been something that was particularly enjoyed by any of them, but they had tolerated it for the majority of their lives, most of the time by allowing him to do it, or even going as far to do it back sometimes.

But Five hadn’t been around most of their lives. He’d literally been gone longer than he’d been with them, although that was sometimes hard to remember. With him looking exactly like he did the last time they saw him and the way their family was starting to click back together, it sometimes seemed like he’d never left.

“That’s because our coffee maker is the worst one I’ve ever seen. Including the ones at the Commision,” Five said, seeming to shudder at the thought of their cheaply made, yet overpriced coffee.

“Why don’t you let me make you some then?” Klaus asked, an idea already starting to form in his head. If he could make Five some decent coffee, then maybe he wouldn’t be as mad when he inevitably found out it had been Klaus who had had the last of his. 

Plus, Klaus just wanted to do something for his brother. He’d been through a lot, and yet he never asked for anyone’s help. If he asked Five why, he knew he’d receive an eye roll and a sharp response of ‘because you guys are worthless,’ but Klaus could see past that. He knew what it was like to not feel like you deserved any help, even once others started to offer it.

“You?” Five asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Sure me!” Klaus said, spinning around. “I’m great at making drinks! That’s practically my role at parties now since I don’t do drugs anymore.” He leaned over and bopped Five on the head. “You, my smaller brother, will have to do with no alcohol in it, however. You’re a growing boy after all, we wouldn’t want to stunt your growth.”

“He’s going to actually kill you, you know,” Ben said. 

Klaus glanced in his direction. “Then we can be ghost buddies and bother the rest of them together,” he said, happily. 

Five looked towards Ben, who waved even though Five couldn’t see him. With a roll of his eyes he turned back to Klaus. “I don’t really care what you do,” he said as he walked out.

“You won’t regret this!” Klaus shouted after him.

X  
A short trip to the store later and he was presenting his supplies to Ben.

“Do you even know how to make these?” Ben asked. He eyed Klaus’s ingredients with trepidation, obviously not sure if Klaus knew what he was doing.

“Of course I do,” Klaus said, although he said it in a way that made Ben doubt him. “Okay, so I read about it in one of Allison’s magazines. But it looked pretty easy, and not to mention delicious, so I figured why not! Nothing too good for my smaller brother.”

“Again,” Ben said, leaning against the counter. “He’s going to kill you. You know he doesn’t like the jokes about his size.”

“Then he shouldn’t be so adorable,” Klaus said. “Did you know him and Vanya are like the same height? And you know how tiny Vanya is.”

Ben sighed, choosing to ignore his comment. Klaus would learn one day.

Klaus, meanwhile, had already pulled out a mixing bowl and started to pour his ingredients into it. First instant coffee, then sugar, then hot water. It looked disgusting but according to Klaus that was exactly what it should look like.

“Where does Mom keep the mixer?” he asked, halfway crawling into one of the lower cabinets. 

Ben waited until he was basically all the way inside before answering. “Top right shelf.”

A few crashed later and Klaus was glaring at Ben. “Could’ve told me that before.”

“Could’ve asked before you went crawling into cabinets.”

It took longer than either one of them expected to get the perfect, creamy tan color from the whipped coffee, but once it was done the smell was heavenly. 

Klaus grabbed a glass, dropped a few ice cubes in it with milk, and gently poured the coffee over the top. 

“Do you really think he’ll like it?” Ben asked doubtfully. It was so different from anything he usually saw Five drinking.

“His favorite food used to be peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches, believe me, he’ll love it,” Klaus said, the picture of confidence.

It took a quick search of the house to figure out that Five was hiding out in his room. Once Ben reported having seen him reading at his desk, Klaus had barged into the room, waving the coffee in front of him.

“Ta-da!” he said, placing the coffee on the desk next to Five. 

Five looked over at it before closing his book. “What is that?” he asked. 

“Coffee! Whipped coffee to be more specific,” he said.

Five stared at it for a moment longer than strictly necessary. “It looks more like a milkshake.”

Klaus rolled his eyes. “It’s coffee, I swear. Would you just try it and fall in love with it already?”

Five gave Klaus a skeptical look before he picked it up, using the goofy, colorful straw Klaus had placed inside it.

“He hates it,” Ben said, although there truly hadn’t been a reaction yet. 

Klaus turned around. “Would you shut up?”

“This is so sweet it’s going to give me a cavity,” Five said flatly.

Klaus looked back to his smaller brother, his expression falling. He really had thought Five would enjoy it, after all.

“Oh,” he said. “I- uh, I can take it if you don’t want it.”

Five glanced as his outstretched hand before turning his attention back to his book. “I didn’t say that.”

Klaus stood there for a second, clearly confused. Then, a smile broke out across his face as he wrapped both his arms around Five. 

“I knew you’d love it! You always did like sweet things, even when you tried to pretend you didn’t!” he said, shaking his brother side to side. “Ben said you wouldn’t like it, but I knew you would.”

Five looked around the room, trying to tell where Ben might be standing. Eventually, he settled for nodding at a random corner, which actually happened to contain Ben.

“Great. Now leave,” Five said. “I’m trying to read, and I can’t do that with you hovering over me.”

“Whatever,” Klaus said, bouncing away from Five. “Just ask if you want another!”

“Doubtful,” Five said. “It’d taste better with alcohol, anyways!” Five shouted after him.

But he did drink all of it, and if Ben happened to see him looking through Allison’s magazines later for the recipe, well, he wouldn’t say anything.

XXX


	2. Chapter 2

“You can’t keep wearing that uniform,” Allison said, staring at Five.

He hardly looked up from where he was writing equations in his notebook. “I’m assuming you’re talking to me?”

She rolled her eyes to the sky before stepping over to him. “Well, you are the only one here in a uniform.”

Once it became obvious that she wasn’t going away, he shut his book. There was always a certain tone his siblings used that meant he wasn’t going to be getting anything done any time soon, and Allison had used it. “We wore these almost our entire childhood. Tell me why it’s so wrong for me to wear it now?”

Allison stood next to him, picking at lint that wasn’t actually there. She couldn’t put it fully into words why it was wrong to see her brother in their old uniform. Maybe it was because they’d all stopped wearing them once they’d reached a certain age and left home, or maybe it was just because it was strange to see him back here, the same way he looked when he left all those years ago.

Everything else in the house was branded with their father, including their wrist, but that didn’t mean that they had to show it with their clothes, too, anymore.

“Wouldn’t you be more comfortable in clothes that you picked out?” she asked, hoping to appease to his own sense of identity. Five had an independent streak a mile wide, surely that would help.

“Allison, I have literally never picked out my clothes, nor have I ever really cared about what I wear,” he said, very matter of factly.

While Five had probably meant that to be the end of the conversation, it only served to further her point.

“See, that’s what I mean! Now that you’re back, and it doesn’t seem like the apocalypse is coming anytime soon, don’t you think that you should pick something for yourself? Something you actually want to wear, and not something you have to wear because there are literally no other options?” she asked.

Five looked at her, really looked at her. She could tell that he was searching for something, but she had no idea what it might actually be.

Whatever it was, he must have figured it out, because he sighed again and tossed his book to the side. “Fine. But you’re paying, and you owe me a coffee.”

Allison grinned, just barely holding herself back from hugging him. There was no way he would agree to go with her if she did that.

“Deal.”

X

Allison eyed some of the clothes that she had picked out with Five in mind.They were nice, in style clothes than she had figured he wouldn’t mind wearing. 

Five, meanwhile, was longuing against a clothes rack, looking like he’d rather be back in the apocalypse than here. They’d been here for at least an hour already, and it was obvious that both of them were running low on patience.

“What do you think about these?” she asked.

“They’re fine,” he said. Which is what he had said about all the others, too. 

“Come on, Five,” she said, picking up another shirt. “This is supposed to be for you.”

“More like you,” he said under his breath.

She raised an eyebrow at him. “What was that?” She was tired of all the mutters and scoffs from him. This was supposed to be fun, after all.

Slowly, he pushed himself off of the clothes rack to stand next to her. “You’re the one who doesn’t like the fact that I’m wearing the uniform, you’re the one who wanted to take me clothes shopping, and you’re the one who keeps picking out these things,” he said, gesturing to the clothes.

Her cheeks were red, anger flaring up against her better judgement. “I’m only picking stuff out because you aren’t even looking at anything!” she said. “If you would just look-”

“What difference does it make in what I wear?” he asked, “Why does it bother you so much?”

“It just does,” she said, trying not to raise her voice.

“I don’t need you to mother me, Allison,” he said, his voice low and tense. 

Allison looked at him, searching his face. He looked like any other teenager, all piss and vinegar wrapped up into a 5’ft flat body. If she didn’t know any better she’d truly believe him to just an angry brat who didn’t want to do what his older sister told him to do. If she imagined hard enough she could even almost see Claire in a few years, angry and rebellious, the way all teenagers were supposed to be.

But she did know better. She knew who he was, and knew that none of this was youthful rebelliousness.

“I’m not trying to mother you, Five,” she said, sighing. “I just don’t want you to have to wear that uniform anymore.”

Five paused, confusion on his face. She shoved the clothes into his arms, nearly knocking him over with the unexpected force of it. “Forget it,” she muttered.

“Allison-”

She held a hand up as she walked out, not even glancing behind her.

X

It didn’t take long for her to cool off. It honestly never did when it came to her siblings. Sure, they might annoy each other, sometimes literally to the point where they felt like they might kill each other, but they were still a family.

She sat down on a bench outside, a few doors down from the clothing store. As mad as she might have been, she still didn’t want to leave him here. A few reasons popped up, most of them with easy solutions.

The Commission could always come back.

(Even though Five had reassured them that it was gone, and that even if it did come back, he was perfectly capable of taking care of himself. He had for years, after all.)

She was his ride home.

(He would be just fine getting home. His power made that pretty convenient, and there were buses if he didn’t want to potentially draw attention to himself.)

She wanted to apologize.

(That one didn’t have any solutions.)

Their family had never been great at apologies. Allison had figured that was just another messed up thing about growing up the way they did, but as she got older and away from her family she realized it was a thing for a lot of people. Especially siblings.

She sighed as she rubbed her palms against her thighs. The longer she sat out here, the more it would feel like she was running away and the harder it would be to go back inside.

As she stood up she noticed another shop just a couple of doors down. It was a coffee shop, the kind you usually saw out in LA with expensive foreign coffees that celebrities talked about. She’d never been particularly fond of them, but she had promised to get Five coffee.

This would be as good of a peace offering as any.

X

When Allison returned she was sure Five had left her there. She searched where they had originally been looking for clothes, up near the front, even sneaking over to what she had dubbed in her head as the ‘old man section’, but he was nowhere to be seen.

Just when she was convinced he had ditched her, he appeared behind her. 

“Is that coffee?” he asked, gesturing to her hands. 

She nodded, holding out one of the cups to him. That’s when she noticed that he had changed clothes while she was gone.

“That looks nice,” she said, sipping her own coffee. If she made a big deal about it Five would likely blink out before she could say anything else.

It was a nice outfit though. Dark colored jeans with a nice shirt and sweater layered together. It looked a bit strange on someone his age (and Allison was sure one of her siblings would call him Grandpa at some point), but it was much better than the uniform.

“I guess,” Five said, taking his own sip of coffee. Something ran across his face as he pulled the cup back to look at it. “What is this?” he asked.

Allison smiled and took another sip of her own coffee. “Something people drink back in LA. I’m honestly surprised they have it here.”

Five nodded, twirling the cup around in his hand. “I thought it tasted expensive.”

She couldn’t help but laugh at that. “Everything’s expensive in LA.”

Five had nothing to say to that. Instead, he took another drink of the coffee. Allison wasn’t sure if he actually liked it, but she did know that Five wasn’t the type of spare people’s feelings. Surely he thought it was at least decent if he was willing to keep drinking it.

“I didn’t mean the comment about mothering me,” he said sincerely, albeit reluctantly. 

“I know,” she said. And she did.

“You know, if you _had_ been my mom, we might not have turned out as fucked up as we are,” he said, almost like a joke. He held up his cup in a cheers motion.

She didn’t return it. “I’m sure Patrick would beg to differ on that,” she said.

“Patrick doesn’t know anything,” Five said as if it were fact. “Claire couldn’t ask for a better mom.”

She wrapped both of her hands around her coffee, letting the warmth surround them. “ _I’m_ not so sure about that one.”

Five’s brow furrowed as he looked at her. “People make mistakes, Allison. Even parents. Some bigger than others. But you know what you did was wrong, and I’ve seen you. You’re different than when I left, at least. I know you’re a good mom.”

She looked away from her hands to give him a tight smile. It didn’t reach her eyes, she knew, but hopefully he knew what it meant to her. “Thanks, Five.” She blinked away tears as she took a steadying breath and pointed to his shirt. “So, any other outfits in mind, or just the one?”

“A few,” he said, still not looking away from her. “But I thought I’d show them to you first.”

It didn’t take long to locate the few things he had picked out. They were all still pretty odd outfits for a teenager to wear, and none of them looked as relaxed as Allison had had in mind, but she did have to admit that they seemed to fit her brother.

“You’re such an old man,” she said, eyeing the sweater he had picked out. 

“Well, I am basically twice your age,” he joked. A lady shopping near them gave them strange looks before walking away, causing both of them to grin at each other. It never got old seeing people react to Five’s comments (or sometimes just Five in general).

It was quiet for a moment, the good kind of quiet that came with being with people you were close with.

“So why _does_ it bother you so much that I wear our old uniforms?” he bluntly asked. 

_So much for quiet,_ she thought. For a moment she debated being honest with him. They’d never been good with feelings, why should now be any different?

She shrugged, trying to play it off. If the look on Five’s face was anything to go by, she hadn’t succeeded. 

“It’s just-” she paused, swirling her coffee with one hand and trailing her fingers along the clothes next to them with the other. “You look the same, you know? So much has changed, and yet, you still look exactly like you did the day you left.”

From the corner of her eyes she could see it click for him. “Ah,” he said, his coffee up and hiding most of his face. “I guess that is a bit weird.”

“A bit?” she laughed.

He shrugged again. An awkward silence filled the air between them now, the only sounds were them sipping their coffee and the people walking around the store.

“Well,” he eventually broke it. “My coffee’s gone, which seems like a pretty good sign to head out.” 

She watched as he headed towards the changing rooms, making a brief stop on the way over to grab a couple of other clothes in similar styles to the ones he was wearing.

“I hope you brought your credit card, because clothes like this aren’t cheap,” Five called over his shoulder as he disappeared into the dressing room.

Allison shook her head. As if the money would ever matter when it came to her family.

“And we’re getting another coffee before we head home,” he said.

“That wasn’t the deal,” she called out, although she knew she’d buy him one anyways.

“Too bad!”

She smiled to herself. Some parts of her life were still a bit rocky, but at least she could fix one thing. 

_One thing at a time._

**Author's Note:**

> First chapter was for Klaus and kind of Ben. Next up will be Allison! I hope you enjoyed reading!


End file.
